Kissimmee to fund 1 garage renovation this year to help with affordable housing; advocates say it’s not enough

The Kissimmee City Commission decided in mid-May to study an idea to use city funds to renovate homeowners’ garages into studio apartments to help address Osceola County’s steadily growing problem with homelessness.

On Tuesday, commissioners unanimously agreed to move ahead — and spend nearly $90,000 this year to renovate one willing homeowner’s garage into affordable housing.

Housing advocates worry it’s not enough.

City resident Alex Alemi told commissioners to “think bigger” and questioned if the cost was worth it for a single unit.

“I’m very pleased that this commission is taking the problem of housing affordability seriously,” Alemi said. “These things are expensive to build … and then if the city is going to subsidize these, then yeah, your options are limited and you might incentivize people with a few thousand dollars and you might hope to influence 10 units, but that’s not really going to help with the scale of the problem.”

Osceola has seen a 70% increase since 2019 in those experiencing homelessness, according to recent regional data. At the same time the number of affordable housing units available in the Orlando-Kissimmee region has declined by roughly 51,000 for extremely low-income households, according to the most recent data from the Shimberg Center for Housing Studies.

City Manger Mike Steigerwald urged commissioners not to subsidize the entire renovation of each garage in order to complete more units.

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“You got to get people over the hump that may be thinking about it, have some money to do it, but they don’t have everything they need to do it,” Steigerwald said. “The only program that we pay 100% of the costs on anything is our housing rehab where someone is in danger of becoming homeless because their house is in such poor condition.”

But the commission, with leadership from Commissioner Angela Eady who had the idea for the program, decided to stick with fully funding one unit this year to see how things go.

City staff will present the commission with a final overview of how the pilot program will work in 30 days, including details such as unit amenities along with the selection process for the homeowner and tenant. The commission will take another vote at that time.

Development Services Director Craig Holland told commissioners renovating a single unit would cost over $98,000 due to construction materials and various city, county and school board impact fees. Holland said there are some options to decrease the cost of renovating units.

“The city could possibly waive or reduce mobility, parks and rec, fire and police impact fees because it’s affordable housing,” he said. “Unfortunately because of state statute, permitting fees can’t be waived or reduced.”

The city received over $628,000 in State Housing Initiatives Partnership funds July 1. SHIP funds are constrained by regulations in how they can be used.

The city is only allowed to use roughly $157,000 of the total SHIP funds for rental programs. The city already uses $50,000 for utility assistance programs, eviction prevention programs and for deposit and first month’s rent assistance programs while the remaining $20,000 goes toward new construction. This leaves the city $87,500 to use on the pilot program.

Affordable housing advocates are asking city officials to consider other funding methods to boost its ability to pay for more affordable housing accessory dwelling units when so many people are in need. Accessory dwelling units (ADUs) are smaller, independent living spaces on the same property as a home.

Kody Glazer, chief legal and policy officer for the Florida Housing Coalition, applauded the program and said it would be first in the state to use local government funding to build affordable housing ADUs. But using SHIP funds limits the city’s ability to have an impact, he said.

“The main barrier to using SHIP funds for affordable housing is only 25% of their allocated funds can be used toward rentals,” Glazer said. “Oftentimes I think it’d be helpful to consider just using the city’s own general dollars to do so, so with that they can have more flexibility and not have to go through certain state reporting requirements.”

Glazer stressed to commissioners the importance of identifying the income level of the person they want to help.

“If you have someone who is experiencing homelessness and they may not have a lot of rent to pay it makes sense to maybe foot a larger amount of the bill,” he said. “Versus if you have someone with a higher level of the area’s median income you might be able to provide less public money because the tenant can afford to pay more.”